There’s a dangerous thought that taking part in social media is confined to what you do and don’t write on your blog or twitter account… Guinness just got schooled by FAIL blog, that this thought is nowhere close to being true. Guinness’ first mistake was to post a world-record on their site “Most individuals killed in a terrorist attack” which was of course the attack on the twin towers in 2001, but instead of just stating the morbid record they enticed their readers to “break this record!”. Mistake.
If you post that on your website, and you are Guinness, you’d be naive to think that the internet ninjas who roam the interwebs seeking out these glaring failures would do anything other than call you out on it.
Enter FAIL Blog.
They picked it up, posted it to FAIL blog quite rightly highlighting the absolute failure of Guinness, check it out here.
Cue panic
So it happened. Your brand image is out of your control and you’re receiving negative attention from the internet ninjas on that thing they call the interwebs. What do you NOT do? You do not, under ANY circumstances, send a threatening email to the blog in question demanding that your intellectual property be taken down from their site. Everyone and their nephew knows this. Suuuuurrreeely the people tasked with dealing with this sort of thing are fully aware of the streisand effect and the wrath of fury it will bring to your brand? Evidently not.
Enter mistake number two
Guinness sent the email, they pressed the button, they started the launch sequence and triggered the backlash bomb. The email you don’t send got sent. I wince with embarrassment for the “legal and business affairs” person who wrote this e-fail. The kind folks at FAIL blog made sure to implement damage limitations by removing their name, a nice touch…
The horror
It looks like it was written by a machine, a robot of the bureaucratic headquarters of Boring LTD. The howler Guinness made was actually an opportunity for a bit of creative cover up, a chance to hold their hands up and make it known they’d got it wrong and come out with some integrity and maybe, if they played their cards right, some free marketing. Instead they sent this dystopian nightmare of an email to FAIL Blog!? FAIL BLOG!? This is testament to the fact that every department of your business needs to be trained in social media. Guinness, send us nice chaps at Fluid an email, we’ll show you the ropes, we’ll hold your hand and point at the blogs you don’t send threatening emails to.
The response you should have expected
You should have expected that a blogger, desperate for content for his blog, would publish your email in its entirety. Check. You should have expected that the blogger sends back and publishes an email openly mocking your heavy handed response. Check. You most certainly have expected to see the Streisand effect lock its deathly jaws around your social reputation and crush it into nothingness. Shoulda coulda woulda. Fail fail fail.
OMG U FAIL SO HARD
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is in response to an email FAIL Blog received from an attorney representing Guinness World Records Limited.
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thanks for writing us an email regarding the “Record Breaking Fail”. Unfortunately, douchebaggy cyber-bullying emails will only bring upon you more shame on your house. I am also resisting the urge to write this email in ALL CAPS.
I believe it is the duty of FAIL Blog(TM) to call out organizations when they encourage the public to do such things as “Break the record” for the “Most Individuals Killed In A Terrorist Act”. We firmly believe that our publication of your fail is protected under the concepts of fair use, commentary and non-trademark use. Please RTFM and we welcome you to teh interwebs.
Since we at FAIL Blog(TM) don’t have a legal defense department, we have complied with your request to remove the trademarked term and logo from the original image. We have used the “naughty bits filter” on the image to secure your naughty, naughty, trademark assertions. However, we have posted your email so that our audience can see why we had to remove the name of the failer from the image. I hope that this is the outcome you have expected as now NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW THAT GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS LIMITED HAS FAILED.
The full legal response can be read here: icanhaz.com/legalresponse
Cheers,
FAIL Blog
The aftermath of bad press:
- http://failblog.org/2009/07/08/record-breaking-fail/
- http://current.com/items/90410146_guinness-world-records-reaches-new-levels-of-fail.htm
- http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/13/guinness-world-records-reaches-new-levels-of-fail/
- http://www.techflash.com/Fail_Blog_vs_Guinness_World_Records_in_terrorist_blog_post50708862.html
- http://hawhat.tumblr.com/post/141160106/guinness-is-updated-with-their-failblogs
- http://search.twitter.com/search?q=guinness+fail
The conclusion
Don’t send the email. Send Fluid Creativity an email first, and we’ll save you from a PR disaster.
The Guinness Fail ticker
Embed it on your own site with this wonderous code snippet:
<script language=”javascript”>
/* widget config */
var jtw_search = ‘Guinness’; /* keywords or phrase to send to search.twitter.com and display */
var jtw_width = ‘auto’;
</script>
<script src=”http://tweetgrid.com/widget/widget.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
Link:
